An English smartphone app translation into multiple languages

As part of our ongoing app translation partnership with Google, we began translating a new Android app into Thai, Hindi, Malay, Dutch, Spanish and Italian.

The app in question was designed by developers with a keen interest in education, and its delightful user interface, which includes a ‘read aloud’ feature and fun badges to collect for reaching reading goals, is designed to help encourage young children to enjoy reading. The app is free to download, and has a subscription-based business model, allowing parents to subscribe and receive unlimited access to a vast library of electronic books. The app includes a number of classic fairytales, and the developers also provide original reading content too.

We were required to translate each element of the user interface, and also the original books too. Needless to say, this was a large undertaking that would continue for a considerable amount of time. Therefore, multiple translators were required to work on the different translations, and one of our expert project managers was needed to coordinate the effort and ensure that everything went smoothly.

After selecting a number of skilled, native-speaking translators, the translation began. Things went well for a few weeks, but due to the ongoing nature of the work, it was an inevitable fact that a single translator would be unable to translate all the content for one language. Each translator was given milestone targets to achieve, and when they reached the milestone, they could choose whether they wanted to continue or stop work on the app translation. It was up to our project manager to ensure that new translators were ready to pick-up from where the old translators left-off, ensuring that the new translator was up to speed with the project and that a consistent translation was produced.

After a while, the app and the original resources were completely translated, and the developers could provide their app to new audiences. We will be working with these developers again in the future, and we look forward to speaking with them soon.